Help me build a low stress e-brewery

[JesusQuintana]

Hi all,

I have been in the hobby for about 12 years. Started with a few batches of extract, then have been doing standard all grain cooler mash and batch sparging, with either cooktop gas in the winter or propane burner in the summer. I have added things through the years (eg temp controlled fridge for fermentation, chest freezer kegerator) but for the most part my 'brewery' has been unchanged. As life has gotten busier and great craft beer more widely available, I have brewed less frequently. I find my current setup clunky, cumbersome, and time consuming. No pumps. I lift grain-filled coolers and hot liquid containing kettles off countertops and down steps. Brew day time exceeds 6 hours with a fair bit hands-on.

Well, I want to reinvigorate my brewing and I think starting with a fresh brewery setup is the way to go. I now have space in the basement set aside for the equipment to stay permanently. I always thought I would eventually build a three vessel horizontal brewing rig, but now that the time has come to actually design this, I am wondering if something simpler isn't better. However, the reason I am in this hobby is the freedom to tinker with a recipe and create new things, not just end up with decent tasting beer (can easily just get growler fills of great beer these days), so I don't want to get too simple and lose that ability to be creative with batch sizes, step mashes, etc.

Goals & more info:
- shorter brew days
- less hands on (chunks of the day to play with my young child)
- electric (have 240V available)
- basement (live in Midwest, cold winters)
- I usually make 5-6 gal batches, occasionally 10-12 gal for parties. Ideally I could do both in the new system, and full range of gravity from 1.040 to 1.1+
- System does not have to be mobile. Rather would prefer to leave setup on table and avoid tear down every time
- Would prefer not lifting hot heavy stuff up and down from the counter
- Brewhouse efficiency matters less than brew day efficiency (time, active management) . I will brew at most once per month, so within reason a few extra dollars of grain cost matters less to me.
- OK with some construction, but lean towards more turnkey than complete DIY sourcing and building
- Obviously, ability to produce consistent and great beer.

Obviously no system is perfect, but I would like opinions on styles of breweries to consider and stay away from. I have had my eye on a three vessel system eHERMS like Spike's turnkey for a while, but I have more recently looked into other options like the Blichman BrewEasy kettle RIMS or eBIAB such as the Wort Hog or upcoming Spike eBIAB which may fit my newer goals of simplicity over having my own pro-style homebrew setup.

Anybody in similar circumstances and care to share their experiences?

Thanks.

 

[Bobby_M]

You want an eBIAB system for sure. 4 hours and done.

 

[Wayne1]

Take a look at a BrewZilla 65L All-in-One

BrewZilla 65 L

I migrated to this recently.

My previous home brew system was a single tier, three vessel, two pump, propane rig.

The old system was either in my garage or on my back porch.
I would have to carry fermenters downstairs to my basement.

Now the brew system and temperature controlled fermentation are right next to each other in the basement.

It makes for a quicker, easier brew day with less physical stress on an old man's body.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

A pair of 15G kettles would allow you to do 5G eBIAB batches using just one, or do bigger 10G batches using the pair as a K-RIMS rig.

You would need:
2 15G kettles, one set up with a heating element, the other with a false bottom of some sort (could use BIAB bag)
A controller. A one vessel setup would work fine. The auber cube has the DSPR320 and two pump circuits
One pump with gravity feed for K-RIMS or two pumps
Blichmann Autosparge
Bag or basket with a false bottom (I like a bag and the brewhardware BIAB SS false bottom
One or two tier table

With this you could use the eKettle, false bottom and bag to do recirculating eBIAB for 5G or low gravity 10G batches
Then, do K-RIMS for mid-high gravity 10G batches.

Not a ton of equipment, versatile and capable of fast, simple brew days.

Edited to add a couple more thoughts:

Have spike build your kettles..they can weld in fittings for the autosparge, heating element, drain, whirlpool, etc. They can also provide a lid for doing steam condensation (or get a steam slayer and adapt your own lid).

I got a table from home depot that has a crank to raise it up or drop it down. It makes a great brew table as you can lower it to do eBIAB and have easy access to the kettle for dough-in, etc, but you can raise it and use a secondary low stand (I use a rollling dolly from Harbor Freight) to do a gravity feed for K-RIMS.

 

[wisconsinitebrewer]

As another midwest basement electric brewer, I understand what you are looking to get done. I'll add a couple comments
~Going electric and moving to the basement was one of the best moves I have made. Being able to brew in the middle of winter inside is fantastic. One thing to note, are you going to have water available? Drain to dump things? Both make things much easier during brew day.
~My quantities are the same as you. I went with a 3 vessel-15 gallon-2 pump system. It allows me to do 5-10 gallon batches. I built mine just because I wanted to save money and I enjoy doing those types of things. Since I've done it, part of me has always wondered if I should have gone eBIAB instead...save space and clean up...maybe I should stop thinking about it or I'll end up changing...

 

[cubalz]

Easiest would probably be a Grainfather or a clone. They have grain bill limitations but they are plug and play.

 

[Transamguy77]

Are you looking for a 3 vessel system or a large single vessel system? There is so many ways to do this.

 

[JesusQuintana]

Thanks all. This is some great advice.

I am leaning towards something a little more versatile than the all in one systems like the Grainfather and Brewzilla. Although they really are just a fully contained eBIAB if I understand them correctly...

Number of vessels is less important to me than to meet my goals of less time and less hauling stuff around.

Water is available as is a laundry tub utility sink. Floor drain is some distance away. So washing stuff no problem, but disposing grain and the like will be hauling upstairs for composting. I could make a vent outside, but leaning towards a steam condensation lid.

I really like the idea of flexing between an eBIAB and K-RIMS setup like Hawk-I suggests. That's a great idea. I could start with the eBIAB only and then accumulate parts for the 2nd vessel. Do you or anybody run a setup like this and/or have pics/diagrams of a similar setup?

 

[treacheroustexan]

Go with the claw hammer ebiab. This link is for the 240 but the 120 is also available and a few hundred cheaper. Just FYI. 10 gallon system but just as easily does 5 gal.
https://www.clawhammersupply.com/co...oducts/electric-home-brewing-system-240v-biab

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Thanks all. This is some great advice.

I am leaning towards something a little more versatile than the all in one systems like the Grainfather and Brewzilla. Although they really are just a fully contained eBIAB if I understand them correctly...

Number of vessels is less important to me than to meet my goals of less time and less hauling stuff around.

Water is available as is a laundry tub utility sink. Floor drain is some distance away. So washing stuff no problem, but disposing grain and the like will be hauling upstairs for composting. I could make a vent outside, but leaning towards a steam condensation lid.

I really like the idea of flexing between an eBIAB and K-RIMS setup like Hawk-I suggests. That's a great idea. I could start with the eBIAB only and then accumulate parts for the 2nd vessel. Do you or anybody run a setup like this and/or have pics/diagrams of a similar setup?

I'm in the process of migrating to something exactly like this, except that I'm using 10G kettles since I have no plans to brew 10G batches (I have trouble getting through 5G in a timely manner).

I was already doing a pseudo 3 vessel with a 10G kettle, a cooler MT and and another cooler to store sparge water. I wanted to switch to electric and went back and forth between K-RIMS, recirculating eBIAB and Counterflow HERMS. All are great systems and there are advantages to each. Ultimately I whittled it down to K-RIMS and eBIAB. I liked the simplicity of eBIAB, but wanted the capacity of a K-RIMS for high gravity beers (I like to brew 1.125 OG type stouts). Then I thought, as my son likes to say: "Por que no los dos?" (why not both?).

They really are a great fit. There are many threads about each. eBIAB is simple, pump, bag/false bottom or basket, kettle with an element (or you can try induction like I did...see below) and some sort of controller. You can use all of that and just add another kettle (which becomes a mash tun) and a blichmann autosparge and, voila!, you have a K-RIMS rig. The main difference is that, for K-RIMS, the falsebottom/bag or basket goes in the kettle that doesn't have the heating element and you heat the wort in the kettle that does. The most simple approach is to gravity drain from the mash tun into the kettle, using a valve to control the recirculation rate. Then you pump back up to the mash tun from the kettle with a pump. At the top of the mash tun, you use the auto sparge to regulate flow to maintain a set mash volume. The auto sparge automatically matches the flow that you set draining out of the mash tun. You measure temps at the boil kettle outlet. This prevents overshoot. You can put a second temp probe at the MLT drain to see what kind of temp stratification you're getting if desired.

This gives you double the volume for mashing since you've got the two kettles. It also lets you do LODO since you can have the grains in the mash tun and underlet the initial strike water. If you vorlauf before recirculating, you can get clear wort into the kettle (which they say doesn't matter, but I prefer it).

Here's the basic process I envision but have not fully implemented yet (covid is putting a damper on things). This assumes some of the common steps like milling grains.

1. Put water/salts into kettle and heat to strike temp (boil first if dong LODO)
2. Put milled grain into MLT with bag/false bottom or basket
3. When ready to dough in, connect output of boil kettle to pump, and pump output to MLT drain port
4. Open valves and pump strike water to MLT to desired mash volume.
   1. If you don't care about LODO, you can just pump water into the top and add grains after
5. Turn off pump and close valves
6. Stir and let rest for about 10 minutes.
7. Perform vorlauf (you can do this manually with a pitcher or you can use the pump to recirculate just within the MLT).
8. Connect MLT drain to boil kettle WP port, boil kettle drain to pump, pump to MLT auto sparge.
9. Open MLT valve to get the desired recirculation rate. Open boil kettle valve all the way and turn on pump. Auto sparge will regulate flow from boil kettle to MLT to match flow from the MLT.
10. Begin controller mash step to regulate the temp of the wort. The temp should be measured coming out of the boil kettle.
11. When mash is complete, simply turn off the pump that returns wort to the MLT and close the boil kettle drain valve. When the wort drains fully from the MLT, you're ready to boil.

Now for a bit about my craziness:

I already had a 1 10G kettle. I picked up a brewhardware false bottom, an Auber Cube, and a brew bag. This is where I got a bit crazy....I really wanted 240v induction that I could control with a PID. I don't have the confidence to go digging into the guts to modify the induction unit, so I wanted to be able to just cycle it on/off based on an externally read temp. I thought I could do this with a manual induction unit and the cube. I was right about the induction unit, wrong about the cube. The auber is designed to work with a regular in-wort heating element and, to simulate lower output during a mash rest, it cycles the power on/off at up to a 60Hz rate. Needless to say, the induction unit didn't care for that. I knew it *could* do that, I didn't know that there's no way to prevent it (my bad, I misread the specs).

So I'm now building a hybrid controller. I'm going to keep the cube intact, but instead of having the the low voltage signal that turns the 240v power on/off coming from within the cube, it's going to come from a craftbeerpi controller. The craftbeerpi is software driven and has plugins that use a much more simple controller logic: if temp is too low, turn it on, if it's too high, turn it off. This should work quite nicely with the induction unit. I actually did a recirc eBIAB where I manually turned the induction unit on/off based on the temp. It worked great, step mash went exactly as planned.

A couple other notes about things I discovered along the way:

• The BrewHardware.com false bottom is stainless and uses bolts that screw into nuts that are welded to the bottom. This allows you do use different bolts to achieve different heights of false bottom without any welding. I went to the hardware store and bought an assortment of SS bolts in varying lengths so that I can have whatever height I want.
• The more course bag from The Brew Bag-Designed for Brew In A Bag-This is your LAST brew bag! works great with recirculation.
• For K-RIMS, you can just use a regular false bottom, but if you have a dual purpose rig, why not use the FB/Bag you already have? Plus, clean up is much easier when you can just pull the bag out and dump it instead of scooping grains from the MLT.
• Spike does custom kettles, so you can configure them exactly how you want: Boil kettle with TC element port, drain port, and whirlpool port. MLT with drain port and return/autosparge port
• If you want to do a sparge, you can drain off some of the strike water into a hot water safe container prior to dough-in. Then, after you've drained the first runnings, transfer the sparge water to the MLT, stir, vorlauf and drain the second runnings to the boil kettle.
• I have reflectix insulation on my kettle and would have it on both for K-RIMS to hold temp during the initial rest period.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Let me know if you have any questions. There are a number of people here doing home grown K-RIMS and several commercial systems based on it, so if you choose that, post about it and you can get feedback from them.

 

[bjhbrew]

I'm in the process of migrating to something exactly like this, except that I'm using 10G kettles since I have no plans to brew 10G batches (I have trouble getting through 5G in a timely manner).

I was already doing a pseudo 3 vessel with a 10G kettle, a cooler MT and and another cooler to store sparge water. I wanted to switch to electric and went back and forth between K-RIMS, recirculating eBIAB and Counterflow HERMS. All are great systems and there are advantages to each. Ultimately I whittled it down to K-RIMS and eBIAB. I liked the simplicity of eBIAB, but wanted the capacity of a K-RIMS for high gravity beers (I like to brew 1.125 OG type stouts). Then I thought, as my son likes to say: "Por que no los dos?" (why not both?).

They really are a great fit. There are many threads about each. eBIAB is simple, pump, bag/false bottom or basket, kettle with an element (or you can try induction like I did...see below) and some sort of controller. You can use all of that and just add another kettle (which becomes a mash tun) and a blichmann autosparge and, voila!, you have a K-RIMS rig. The main difference is that, for K-RIMS, the falsebottom/bag or basket goes in the kettle that doesn't have the heating element and you heat the wort in the kettle that does. The most simple approach is to gravity drain from the mash tun into the kettle, using a valve to control the recirculation rate. Then you pump back up to the mash tun from the kettle with a pump. At the top of the mash tun, you use the auto sparge to regulate flow to maintain a set mash volume. The auto sparge automatically matches the flow that you set draining out of the mash tun. You measure temps at the boil kettle outlet. This prevents overshoot. You can put a second temp probe at the MLT drain to see what kind of temp stratification you're getting if desired.

This gives you double the volume for mashing since you've got the two kettles. It also lets you do LODO since you can have the grains in the mash tun and underlet the initial strike water. If you vorlauf before recirculating, you can get clear wort into the kettle (which they say doesn't matter, but I prefer it).

Here's the basic process I envision but have not fully implemented yet (covid is putting a damper on things). This assumes some of the common steps like milling grains.

1. Put water/salts into kettle and heat to strike temp (boil first if dong LODO)
2. Put milled grain into MLT with bag/false bottom or basket
3. When ready to dough in, connect output of boil kettle to pump, and pump output to MLT drain port
4. Open valves and pump strike water to MLT to desired mash volume.
   1. If you don't care about LODO, you can just pump water into the top and add grains after
5. Turn off pump and close valves
6. Stir and let rest for about 10 minutes.
7. Perform vorlauf (you can do this manually with a pitcher or you can use the pump to recirculate just within the MLT).
8. Connect MLT drain to boil kettle WP port, boil kettle drain to pump, pump to MLT auto sparge.
9. Open MLT valve to get the desired recirculation rate. Open boil kettle valve all the way and turn on pump. Auto sparge will regulate flow from boil kettle to MLT to match flow from the MLT.
10. Begin controller mash step to regulate the temp of the wort. The temp should be measured coming out of the boil kettle.
11. When mash is complete, simply turn off the pump that returns wort to the MLT and close the boil kettle drain valve. When the wort drains fully from the MLT, you're ready to boil.

Now for a bit about my craziness:

I already had a 1 10G kettle. I picked up a brewhardware false bottom, an Auber Cube, and a brew bag. This is where I got a bit crazy....I really wanted 240v induction that I could control with a PID. I don't have the confidence to go digging into the guts to modify the induction unit, so I wanted to be able to just cycle it on/off based on an externally read temp. I thought I could do this with a manual induction unit and the cube. I was right about the induction unit, wrong about the cube. The auber is designed to work with a regular in-wort heating element and, to simulate lower output during a mash rest, it cycles the power on/off at up to a 60Hz rate. Needless to say, the induction unit didn't care for that. I knew it *could* do that, I didn't know that there's no way to prevent it (my bad, I misread the specs).

So I'm now building a hybrid controller. I'm going to keep the cube intact, but instead of having the the low voltage signal that turns the 240v power on/off coming from within the cube, it's going to come from a craftbeerpi controller. The craftbeerpi is software driven and has plugins that use a much more simple controller logic: if temp is too low, turn it on, if it's too high, turn it off. This should work quite nicely with the induction unit. I actually did a recirc eBIAB where I manually turned the induction unit on/off based on the temp. It worked great, step mash went exactly as planned.

A couple other notes about things I discovered along the way:

• The BrewHardware.com false bottom is stainless and uses bolts that screw into nuts that are welded to the bottom. This allows you do use different bolts to achieve different heights of false bottom without any welding. I went to the hardware store and bought an assortment of SS bolts in varying lengths so that I can have whatever height I want.
• The more course bag from The Brew Bag-Designed for Brew In A Bag-This is your LAST brew bag! works great with recirculation.
• For K-RIMS, you can just use a regular false bottom, but if you have a dual purpose rig, why not use the FB/Bag you already have? Plus, clean up is much easier when you can just pull the bag out and dump it instead of scooping grains from the MLT.
• Spike does custom kettles, so you can configure them exactly how you want: Boil kettle with TC element port, drain port, and whirlpool port. MLT with drain port and return/autosparge port
• If you want to do a sparge, you can drain off some of the strike water into a hot water safe container prior to dough-in. Then, after you've drained the first runnings, transfer the sparge water to the MLT, stir, vorlauf and drain the second runnings to the boil kettle.
• I have reflectix insulation on my kettle and would have it on both for K-RIMS to hold temp during the initial rest period.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Let me know if you have any questions. There are a number of people here doing home grown K-RIMS and several commercial systems based on it, so if you choose that, post about it and you can get feedback from them.

Wow, that’s a detailed description right there, great post! I’ll throw out one comment from my experience trying kettle rims. If you do go with an element in the kettle, keep it as low as possible. My boil kettle used a boil coil and I found that for certain batch sizes/grain bills that with enough wort in the boil kettle my mash tun would have a very stiff water to grain ratio. It is something you can predict, obviously the worst case was smaller batches and stronger gravities as the amount needed in the boil kettle is a fixed amount. Using an induction plate solves that problem though

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Wow, that’s a detailed description right there, great post! I’ll throw out one comment from my experience trying kettle rims. If you do go with an element in the kettle, keep it as low as possible. My boil kettle used a boil coil and I found that for certain batch sizes/grain bills that with enough wort in the boil kettle my mash tun would have a very stiff water to grain ratio. It is something you can predict, obviously the worst case was smaller batches and stronger gravities as the amount needed in the boil kettle is a fixed amount. Using an induction plate solves that problem though

Yep, I've heard others say the same thing about boil coils. It's actually part of the reason I wanted to go induction. That's a low-mounted as you can go for an element!

 

[bjhbrew]

Yep, I've heard others say the same thing about boil coils. It's actually part of the reason I wanted to go induction. That's a low-mounted as you can go for an element!

Oh yeah, if I would’ve known a controlled induction plate was possible that would’ve been my first choice.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Oh yeah, if I would’ve known a controlled induction plate was possible that would’ve been my first choice.

I think you're fine with a standard ripple element, but I really wanted to go induction.

When I get everything fully operational, I plan to post a thread about the process, how I got it working and what I'd recommend. I'm pretty confident the craftbeerpi will work, but I have parts arriving today that should be the final pieces of the puzzle. It'll take some more DIY with those parts, but I plan to brew this weekend and I'd like to do a trial run before then. Otherwise it's another 60 min's of manually controller the induction unit.

 

[SanPancho]

Definitely Interested to see if you can get the induction working

 

[Paul_Aris]

I did the 3 vessel Sabco brew Magic before and it's just takes too long to clean 3 heavy vessles plus all the plumbing and fittings. That is why I would choose the single brewing a bag/basket.

 

[JesusQuintana]

I'm in the process of migrating to something exactly like this, except that I'm using 10G kettles since I have no plans to brew 10G batches (I have trouble getting through 5G in a timely manner).

I was already doing a pseudo 3 vessel with a 10G kettle, a cooler MT and and another cooler to store sparge water. I wanted to switch to electric and went back and forth between K-RIMS, recirculating eBIAB and Counterflow HERMS. All are great systems and there are advantages to each. Ultimately I whittled it down to K-RIMS and eBIAB. I liked the simplicity of eBIAB, but wanted the capacity of a K-RIMS for high gravity beers (I like to brew 1.125 OG type stouts). Then I thought, as my son likes to say: "Por que no los dos?" (why not both?).

They really are a great fit. There are many threads about each. eBIAB is simple, pump, bag/false bottom or basket, kettle with an element (or you can try induction like I did...see below) and some sort of controller. You can use all of that and just add another kettle (which becomes a mash tun) and a blichmann autosparge and, voila!, you have a K-RIMS rig. The main difference is that, for K-RIMS, the falsebottom/bag or basket goes in the kettle that doesn't have the heating element and you heat the wort in the kettle that does. The most simple approach is to gravity drain from the mash tun into the kettle, using a valve to control the recirculation rate. Then you pump back up to the mash tun from the kettle with a pump. At the top of the mash tun, you use the auto sparge to regulate flow to maintain a set mash volume. The auto sparge automatically matches the flow that you set draining out of the mash tun. You measure temps at the boil kettle outlet. This prevents overshoot. You can put a second temp probe at the MLT drain to see what kind of temp stratification you're getting if desired.

This gives you double the volume for mashing since you've got the two kettles. It also lets you do LODO since you can have the grains in the mash tun and underlet the initial strike water. If you vorlauf before recirculating, you can get clear wort into the kettle (which they say doesn't matter, but I prefer it).

Here's the basic process I envision but have not fully implemented yet (covid is putting a damper on things). This assumes some of the common steps like milling grains.

1. Put water/salts into kettle and heat to strike temp (boil first if dong LODO)
2. Put milled grain into MLT with bag/false bottom or basket
3. When ready to dough in, connect output of boil kettle to pump, and pump output to MLT drain port
4. Open valves and pump strike water to MLT to desired mash volume.
   1. If you don't care about LODO, you can just pump water into the top and add grains after
5. Turn off pump and close valves
6. Stir and let rest for about 10 minutes.
7. Perform vorlauf (you can do this manually with a pitcher or you can use the pump to recirculate just within the MLT).
8. Connect MLT drain to boil kettle WP port, boil kettle drain to pump, pump to MLT auto sparge.
9. Open MLT valve to get the desired recirculation rate. Open boil kettle valve all the way and turn on pump. Auto sparge will regulate flow from boil kettle to MLT to match flow from the MLT.
10. Begin controller mash step to regulate the temp of the wort. The temp should be measured coming out of the boil kettle.
11. When mash is complete, simply turn off the pump that returns wort to the MLT and close the boil kettle drain valve. When the wort drains fully from the MLT, you're ready to boil.

Now for a bit about my craziness:

I already had a 1 10G kettle. I picked up a brewhardware false bottom, an Auber Cube, and a brew bag. This is where I got a bit crazy....I really wanted 240v induction that I could control with a PID. I don't have the confidence to go digging into the guts to modify the induction unit, so I wanted to be able to just cycle it on/off based on an externally read temp. I thought I could do this with a manual induction unit and the cube. I was right about the induction unit, wrong about the cube. The auber is designed to work with a regular in-wort heating element and, to simulate lower output during a mash rest, it cycles the power on/off at up to a 60Hz rate. Needless to say, the induction unit didn't care for that. I knew it *could* do that, I didn't know that there's no way to prevent it (my bad, I misread the specs).

So I'm now building a hybrid controller. I'm going to keep the cube intact, but instead of having the the low voltage signal that turns the 240v power on/off coming from within the cube, it's going to come from a craftbeerpi controller. The craftbeerpi is software driven and has plugins that use a much more simple controller logic: if temp is too low, turn it on, if it's too high, turn it off. This should work quite nicely with the induction unit. I actually did a recirc eBIAB where I manually turned the induction unit on/off based on the temp. It worked great, step mash went exactly as planned.

A couple other notes about things I discovered along the way:

• The BrewHardware.com false bottom is stainless and uses bolts that screw into nuts that are welded to the bottom. This allows you do use different bolts to achieve different heights of false bottom without any welding. I went to the hardware store and bought an assortment of SS bolts in varying lengths so that I can have whatever height I want.
• The more course bag from The Brew Bag-Designed for Brew In A Bag-This is your LAST brew bag! works great with recirculation.
• For K-RIMS, you can just use a regular false bottom, but if you have a dual purpose rig, why not use the FB/Bag you already have? Plus, clean up is much easier when you can just pull the bag out and dump it instead of scooping grains from the MLT.
• Spike does custom kettles, so you can configure them exactly how you want: Boil kettle with TC element port, drain port, and whirlpool port. MLT with drain port and return/autosparge port
• If you want to do a sparge, you can drain off some of the strike water into a hot water safe container prior to dough-in. Then, after you've drained the first runnings, transfer the sparge water to the MLT, stir, vorlauf and drain the second runnings to the boil kettle.
• I have reflectix insulation on my kettle and would have it on both for K-RIMS to hold temp during the initial rest period.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Let me know if you have any questions. There are a number of people here doing home grown K-RIMS and several commercial systems based on it, so if you choose that, post about it and you can get feedback from them.

Thanks for the amazingly detailed post. I will be watching closely for your updates on your new rig. Sounds great and I will likely steal some of those ideas

As for me, I think I've ruled out a three vessel system based on everyone's advice. I'll probably start with a recirculating eBIAB and keep the option open for an add-on K-RIMS like you describe down the road. Time to start shopping! Thanks y'all.

 

[Bjørn T.]

Check out Brewtools b40 or b80/120

 

[makumazahn]

It's bigger system, but have you seen Kal's Electric Brewery setup? I've been using a burner outside in California, but I've been looking to move things inside and electric, and since I just moved to Montana, I'm in your same situation. The upfront expense seems to warrant the customization options and ease of use.